By Audrey Matusich This school year marks the second year of our Youth Watershed Stewards program, a collaboration among SFUSD schools, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), Lotus Water, and The Watershed Project (TWP). The goal of this collaboration has been to fix and maintain preexisting rain cisterns at San Francisco elementary schools, allowing schools to use the cisterns not only to provide water to their schoolyard gardens, but also as a teaching tool for students to learn the importance of water conservation and benefits of green infrastructure. The photo below …
Rain and Drought Update
By Dan Kirk Have you hydroplaned yet? Canceled a trip because it’s too scary to hydroplane? Felt proud about keeping water out of your house after you learned new home flooding prevention techniques after the first atmospheric dumped on your house? Or felt the opposite - enraged at the fact that you live in a cemented over floodplain and can’t catch a break? Have you been trying to grapple with the fact that the reality of the drought in California truly sucks your soul dry and you feel a little weird to be “over the rain”? Well, if you are shaking your fist at the sky, maybe unclench …
What’s In Your Watershed? Lichen
By Maggie Chen What could be right in front of your eyes and not quite seen? … Lichen! Many people walk past lichen without knowing what they are – which is understandable since they aren’t just one life form but a combination of organisms and no two lichen are the same. As complex life forms, lichen are a symbiotic partnership of two separate organisms: a fungus and an algae. The fungus is the partner that determines the majority of the lichen’s characteristics, which could be the lichen’s thallus shape down to its fruiting bodies. The filaments from the fungus …
What’s In Your Watershed? Chinook Salmon in Walnut Creek
By Zachary Drummond As an avid fisherman and outdoorsman, I find myself reading about our Bay Area watershed more than I’d like to admit. One of many discoveries I've made whilst reading about our local watershed came from reading the Contra Costa County Watershed Atlas. In this publication, I read about a local population of Chinook Salmon in the lower portion of Walnut Creek. This was very interesting to me, because at the time I only knew of Lagunitas Creek in Marin being an area locally that I could see salmon spawning. I decided to do more research and discovered two more …
Meet the Green Collar Corps!
By Pinkie Young This January, The Watershed Project had the pleasure of welcoming five new Green Collar Corps members to our staff. The Green Collar Corps is our internship and career development program designated for young people ages 17-24, especially those who have been historically underrepresented in the environmental field. Our interns come to us with a range of skills and interests, but all share the desire to learn more about the environmental field and make a positive impact on their community. Throughout the next year, Green Collar Corps members will participate in career …
Transformation on the Richmond Greenway – Thank you MLK Day Organizers and Volunteers!
On January 16, 2023, The Watershed Project hosted a volunteer workday between 17th and 20th on the Richmond Greenway in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr., who fiercely believed in unity and the power of coming together to work towards a common goal; freedom from oppression. When we come together to volunteer our time to keep the Richmond Greenway healthy, clean, and thriving, our act of generosity is antithetical to that of the oppressor, who takes many shapes and forms in the various racist systems that keep, for example, all neighborhoods from having adequate funding for and equitable …
Bringing Steelhead to East Bay Streams
By Peter Mangarella Steelhead are a type of rainbow trout with wanderlust. They are anadromous fish, that is, they live most of their life in the ocean, enter freshwater streams only briefly to spawn and then immediately return to the ocean. Of course, streams in California are often dry except during the rainy season, so over the millennia, steelhead have adapted their life cycle to accommodate the California climate. When streams are flowing, steelhead are said to “cue” on the high flows, and enter the streams to spawn. If the climate is such that there are no high flow events, the …
MLK Day of Service – Leading with Love
By Kat Sawyer As The Watershed Project prepares for the upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service at the Richmond Greenway on January 16th, I’ve been reflecting on the legacy of Martin Luther King and how important it is that his birthday has become a national holiday marked by community service. It is a fitting tribute to his life, and a powerful way to remember his work and the ultimate sacrifice he made in service to the civil rights movement. Action is love personified. What we do matters. A movement is made of many people working together. Within that work, one person can …
